UN says methane emissions continue to rise, but forecasts are better for COP30 Amazon

As the document notes, new waste regulations in Europe and North America and slower growth in natural gas markets between 2020 and 2024 have reduced forecast levels, and they are expected to decline further by 2030 compared to 2021 projections.

“The past five years have witnessed unprecedented global interest and measures to address methane gas,” the report stated. “Since 2020, countries’ political commitments to reduce methane emissions have increased significantly. In June 2025, 65% of countries signatory to the Paris Agreement included policies and measures targeting major sources of methane in their most recent Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), representing an increase of almost 38% compared to their pre-2020 NDCs,” UNEP adds in the document.

Methane is a greenhouse gas that scientific findings indicate contributes significantly to the rise in average temperature on the planet, and is responsible for a third of global warming since the Industrial Revolution. It is 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide and is mainly emitted by the agricultural sector, fossil fuel exploitation and the decomposition of waste in landfills.

According to the survey conducted by UNEP, implementing national action plans for methane, including targets contained in countries’ nationally determined contributions, could reduce about 8% of emissions of this type of gas by 2030 compared to 2020 levels. If fully implemented, this would be the largest and most sustainable reduction in methane emissions in history, according to UNEP.

However, the goal of the 2030 Global Methane Commitment is to reduce methane emissions by 30% by 2030 compared to 2020 levels.

“This requires full implementation of a range of proven and readily available measures to achieve the largest technically possible reductions at the global level,” UNEP explains. “This will bring rapid and multiple climate and clean air benefits,” the report adds. “We can avoid 0.2°C of temperature rise by 2050, as well as avoid more than 180,000 premature deaths and nearly 19 million tons of crop losses annually by 2030. These benefits are estimated to exceed US$330 billion annually by 2030.”

In the UNEP analysis, most of the necessary measures are economically feasible and the benefits outweigh the costs: according to data presented in the survey, the annual cost of achieving the maximum technically feasible reductions in 2030 is about US$127 billion compared to the economic benefits of US$330 billion. Furthermore, more than 80% of the mitigation potential can be implemented at low annual cost – the calculation speaks to 36 tons of CO2e (tons of CO2e).

The report also says that the energy sector accounts for 72% of methane mitigation potential due to new laws related to this activity. The agricultural sector accounts for 18% of the maximum technically viable reductions in 2030, and the waste sector 10%, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.

“Since the launch of the Global Methane Commitment, there has been policy progress in the three key emissions sectors that we need to strengthen and expand to overcome remaining barriers and intensify ambition and action,” comments UNEP. “But transparent and reliable data are essential to track the progress made by governments and industries. The report urges strengthening the collection of empirical data on methane emissions.”

UNEP concludes the document by noting that funding for methane reduction initiatives is growing, but notes that it is still far from achieving the targets by 2030. “Closing the investment gap requires supportive policies to attract private sector leadership and secure commercial financing. Development and private finance have a critical opportunity to increase support.”